Cooperative Principle (H. P. Grice) 格瑞斯的合作原则

In 1967, the Oxford philosopher H. P. Grice delivered his William James Lectures at Harvard University. And there is evidence that Grice began to formulate his ideas of this theory in the fifties, what’ more, it was first became known to the public. In these lectures, Grice presented a panorama of his philosophical thinking on meaning and communication. (Huang, 2004:23) In his second lecture titled“Logic and Conversation”, which is published in Syntax and Semantics, Vol.3: Speech Acts, Grice proposed the Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature.

“Grice’s suggestion is that there is a set of over-arching assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation. These arise, it seems, from basic rational considerations and may be formulated as guidelines for the efficient and effective use of language in conversation to further cooperative ends. Grice identifies as guidelines of this sort four basic Maxims of Conversation or general principles underlying the efficient cooperative use of language, which jointly express a general Cooperative Principle.” (Levinson, 2001:101)

The Cooperative Principle can be comprehended as the following: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.” (Grice, 1975:47) Actually Grice noticed that in daily conversations people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them. And in his view of some regularity in conversation shows that people’s talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did.

To specify the Cooperative Principle further, Grice introduced four categories of maxims as follows:

QUANTITY

a) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.

b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

    It means that in a dialogue, the information would be given to make our contribution that is true. For example:

Some people believe in God.

First this example gives us enough information like “some people” supplies the actually meaning that not everyone believes in God. Second this sentence does not give much useless information.

QUALITY

Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically:

a) Do not say what you believe to be false.

b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

    It means that in a dialogue, the information would be given to make our contribution as much as desired. For example:

Smoking is hazardous to one’s health.

From this example the speaker expresses his own opinion and believes what he has said is true. He does not tell a lie. Or he has the evidence to prove his idea. Its deep meaning is that the speaker believes that smoking is hazardous to one’s health.

RELEVANCE

Make your contributions relevant.

    It means that in a dialogue, the information would be given to make our contribution relevant to the exchange. For example:

I’ve got to go now.

In daily communication, no one would suddenly speak like that. Suppose that we hear these words from the master in the master’s room, here “go now” indicate the speaker wants to go immediately. And what he said is true and relevant. It conform to reality. But from the deep level, it conveys that he hopes the gust would leave subjectively. So this sentence means “I’m going out right now; and you’d better come next time.”

MANNER

    Be perspicuous.

a) Avoid obscurity of expression.

b) Avoid ambiguity.

c) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

d) Be orderly.

It means that in a dialogue, the information would be given to be perspicuous (clear and lucid). For example:

He addressed and sealed the envelope.

Here it tells reader the order of two actions. Actor should first write the address and then seal the envelope. And the action happened orderly. This sentence doesn’t have verbosely useless information and have a coherent program.

In short, these maxims specify what participants have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, cooperative way. They should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient information. Actually this principle is meant to describe what really happens in conversation.